The paperback was released on Amazon and Barnes and Noble on the 1st of July, with the Kindle edition readying itself for release on the 7th! I get to debut it at READERCON and I will READ FROM IT and it will be SCRUMPTIOUS!

Bone Swans is a collection of five recent novellas from C.S.E. Cooney. All of the stories are very good, and one is new to the collection: ‘‘The Bone Swans of Amandale’’. It’s one of a couple in the book that takes as its basis a familiar fairy tale (here, ‘‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’’, elsewhere in the book ‘‘Rumpelstiltskin’’), but which changes it utterly. Maurice is a Rat Person hopelessly in love with Dora Rose, a Swan Person. (Being a clever and cynical rat, he copes pretty well, though.)

When Dora Rose’s sister is murdered as part of a complex plot by the Amandale’s mayor, who wants to make an orchestra of ‘‘bone swans’’, Maurice decides something has to be done, for the sake of the swans, and indeed for the city’s children, who are being misused as well in the mayor’s service, so he goes to his friend, a reluctant piper. The Pied Piper story is all there of course, but just as a skeleton on which to hang multiple intersecting motivations. And the key is, as ever, the telling, and Maurice’s voice.

AND THERE WAS THIS (!!!) REVIEW BY LIBRARY JOURNAL:

07/01/2015

In five beautifully crafted stories, Cooney (Jack O’ the Hills) builds imaginary worlds full of flying carpets, fairy-tale characters, and children confronted with a postapocalyptic Earth. In addition, each tale packs in enough plot for a novel, with adventurous characters who brim with wit. In “Life on the Sun” a young woman’s fate catches up to her. In the title story, Maurice the rat hires the Pied Piper to help out a swan princess. The marvelous “Martyr’s Gem” begins with a marriage and ends with true love. “How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain” is another fairy tale, this time a play on the Rumpelstiltskin story. Cooney’s final piece, “The Big Bah-Ha,” shows her virtuosity with language, as she tells of doomed children striking a bargain with the monster who would eat their bones. VERDICT Short stories, especially in the speculative fiction arena, often feature a clever idea and a punchy delivery. It’s usually not where you find vivid worldbuilding or immersive storytelling, but this gorgeous new collection reveals that both are possible in the short form.—MM